Just what is a cromlech and how did it enrich the name for an architectural firm since 1983?
Lets take the last part first: How did this architectural firm become Cromlech Architect, P.C.?
In 1983 I wanted to start my own architectural practice but did not want to use my own name Dale Paegelow. My wife brought home several choices from a "learn a new word a day" calendar for consideration of a new name.
Now comes the second part: Among the three names she came home with was cromlech, which was loosely described in this calendar, as the first time in recorded history that man took stone and created a built environment consisting of columns and beams. This can be defined as Architecture. A well known example many of you will remember is Stonehenge, located in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England. Other well know sites in England are at Cornwell, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Cloucestershire. Oxfordshire and Shropshire. Scotland has Aberdeenshire, Highland, Isle of Lewis, Isle of Skye, Kincardineshire, Orkney Islands and Perthshire. Wales has Anglesey.
England is not the only location of cromlechs. Ireland has many and among them a rather famous one is the Hill of Howth, near Dublin. This hill, called in ancient Irish, Ben Edar, or The Pinnacle of the Captains, bristles with prehistoric traditions. Here is a fine specimen of the Irish Cromlech, called by the locals, "giants' graves" and here the word "Cromlech" means "God and a Stone".
There are very similar stone formations to be found in France where they are known as "Dolmen".
In Denmark they are called "Dyes".
In Scandinavian countries they are called "Dos."
The cromlech is also defined as a prehistoric monument consisting of an enclosure formed by huge stones planted in the ground, in a circle enclosing a dolmen or mound. The dolmen portion is a prehistoric monument consisting of two or more upright stones supporting a horizontal stone slab.
The history of the megaliths of Brittany is very ancient. The people of the Neolithic era, of which little is known, began building monuments to their dead as far back as 4800 B.C., beginning with solitary Menhirs, or standing stones, that early settlers to Brittany erected as territorial markers. Next came the passage graves: long stone passages capped by immense flag stones and terminating in a circular chamber where the dead were placed. These graves were covered with layer upon layer of dry stone walls to form a Cairn.
By the Late Neolithic period, around the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., the construction of dolmen had begun. These were single chamber tombs with large cumbersome capstones. To this category belongs the dolmen of Essé (La Roche-aux-Fées), the Rock of the Fairies, certainly one of the most excellent examples of megalithic construction in all of Brittany. The capstone to the portal of this 45 feet long chamber weighs over 25 tons!
After several millennium the passage grave and dolmen were being replaced by the cromlech, literally "curved stones", that are reminiscent of the stone rings of Britain. These rings appear to be used as a place of assembly being no less than 150 feet accross.
At this same time came the alignments or stone rows. The rows are often associated with a cromlech.
The megalithic tradition faded by the middle of the second millennium B.C. in Brittany. Thus the cromlech is somewhere in the area of 5,500 years old.
According to: "Bulfinch's Mythology, The Age of Fable CHAPTER XLI, THE DRUIDS.
The druids were the priests or ministers of religion among the ancient Celtic nations in Gaul, Britain, and Germany. Our information respecting them is borrowed from notices in the Greek and Roman writers; compared with the remains of Welsh and Gaelic poetry still extant.
The druids combined the functions of the priest, the magistrate, the scholar, and the physician. They stood to the people of the Celtic tribes in a relation closely analogous to that in which the Brahmans of India, the Magi of Persia, and the priests of the Egyptians stood to the people respectively by whom they were revered.
The druids taught the existence of one god, to whom they gave a name "Be' al," which Celtic antiquaries tell us means "the life of everything," or "the source of all beings," and which seems to have affinity with the Phoenician Baal. What renders this affinity more striking is that the Druids as well as the Phoenicians identified this, their supreme deity, with the Sun. Fire was regarded as a symbol of the divinity. The Latin writers assert that the Druids also worshipped numerous inferior gods.
They used no images to represent the object of their worship, nor did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the performance of their sacred rites. A circle of stones (each stone generally of vast size), enclosing an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in diameter, constituted their sacred place. The most celebrated of these now remaining is Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, England.
These sacred circles were generally situated near some stream, or under the shadow of a grove or wide spreading oak. In the center of the circle stood the Cromlech or altar, which was a large stone, placed in the manner of a table upon other stones set up on end. The Druids had also their high places, which were large stones or piles of stones on the summits of hills. These were called Cairns, and were used in the worship of the deity under the symbol of the sun."
The logo for Cromlech Architect, P.C. also came from this history and some good old fashioned, graphic design. The shape is a basic A configuration (for architect) with a negative C form carved into the inside to represent Cromlech. This is the combining of an A and a C, for Architect and Cromlech, into the same arrangement.
There were some ancient burial sites that were shaped in a basic triangle or an A shape. They consisted of a huge flat triangular shaped stone, held off the ground at its 3 corners by small stones. Additional stones were piled on top to create a pyramid shaped structure. It is thought that these may have been the burial location of Chieftains or Lords.
This is also the basic shape of the Cromlech Architect logo in plan view (from the top). Here we have the understanding of stone-age architecture with the sophisticated abstraction of modern man, combined into one symbol.
What could be more perfect for an architect? Cromlech is a name with 5,500 years of history. Cromlech represents the first time man actually built something in stone that involved architecture.
So it was, that cromlech became Cromlech Inc., then grew into Cromlech Architect and finally Cromlech Architect, P.C. (Which means Professional Corporation).